updated 04:00 pm EDT, Mon July 18, 2011

LaCie vows Thunderbolt Little Big Disk on time

LaCie quickly seized on rumors of delayed Thunderbolt hardware with an official response shooting down the claims. The gear maker said that people had raised false alarm about the Little Big Disk after looking at the Australian page, where the difference in seasons has winter happening mid-year. The release has always been on tap for the summer, LaCie said in pointing to its US page.

Suspicions of a delay had gained momentum partly from the lack of Thunderbolt hardware on the market. Outside of a Pegasus RAID array, virtually no other Thunderbolt-equipped hardware is on the market. The very new state of the Apple- and Intel-designed spec and its limitation to only a handful of Mac models has led to only a small amount of uptake.

When it ships, the multi-drive enclosure will be available in versions with 240GB or 500GB SSDs as well as a slower but larger 1TB rotating drive option. Prices still haven't been set but will likely be high through both the Thunderbolt port and the multi-SSD configurations.